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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422401">it started with eBay</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal'>poalimal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Celebrities and Fan Culture, Fandom, Fic in the Time of Quarantine, Gen, HYDRA but as a record label, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied abuse, M/M, WIP, parasocial relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:54:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Sam Wilson 45 seconds to decide that, actually, he didn't like JB Barnes all that much.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>it started with eBay</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Mind the tags, please.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>It took Sam Wilson 45 seconds to decide that, actually, he didn't like JB Barnes all that much.</p><p>'Hi, my name's Sam,' he said, trying to keep his voice steady, 'and I got this poster for--'</p><p>JB scoffed. Sam paused, confused. JB slid down his sunglasses and looked down at him from behind the table. 'Let me guess - it's for your little sister eBay?'</p><p>Sam's face went hot; and all his joy and anticipation curdled into something sour. 'She goes by Ebby, actually,' he said, sliding across the first edition poster for JB's 2006 LP <em>Daydream</em>, released only in Japan. 'That's E-B-B-Y.'</p><p>JB laughed aloud and shook his head. 'Un-fuckin-believable,' he muttered to the woman standing behind him. Blanche Sitznski, Sam recognised: JB's head of security.</p><p><em>Fuck off, Ebby</em>, JB scrawled, right next to his own face. <em>xoxo, JB</em></p><p>'Thanks,' Sam said, snatching the poster up without looking at JB directly, or at the two teenage girls behind him. He had to get out of here.</p><p>'Wait a sec,' JB called after him, still laughing, 'was that really for you? Dude!'</p><p>Sam threw away the poster on his way out.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The leak hit on the slowest of slow news days, over Easter weekend. The royal baby said her first word, three D-list celebrity couples filed for divorce, the President threatened war again. Yawn. Let's see: there was a protest in Mali over Monsanto, a ship capsized in the Indian Ocean, Britain sent three more seniors back to Jamaica, some parrot in the Amazon went extinct, yea-yea-yea, what can you do about depressing shit like that?</p><p>And oh yeah - the Batrock3rs group hacked Sony Music going back five years, just to prove they could. Over 1 petabytes' worth of emails, Blackberry messages, contracts, riders, demos, tour schedules, unreleased albums, music videos and interview questions were leaked online.</p><p>It was the gift that kept on giving all summer long.</p><p>Honestly, it probably wasn't until around-- what was it, September? That some writer on UpRoxx happened to stumble on the messages between James Buchanan 'JB' Barnes and his former manager Brock Rumlow. At first it seemed funny - this is what well-known ladies' man JB Barnes got up to in his spare time? I guess you never really knew, right?</p><p>But then more details came out. JB had had to ok every single aspect of his day with Brock - what he ate, what he wore, who he talked to, where he went, when he went to the bathroom, when he came, when he slept. And Brock had managed JB for almost his entire time with Sony, since he was just a teen... </p><p>But JB had been dropped by Sony already. He hadn't released music in years, had no social media presence to speak of, and was now best known for his middling presence on increasingly inane Buzzfeed lists: Where Are They Now, Mid-2000s Singers Who Could Still Get It, 5 Times JB Barnes Was Our Spirit Animal, 15 Brown-Haired Guys With Puppies.</p><p>Among all of the details that came-out out of the leak, the play-by-play of some Nazi creep and some washed-up loser barely even registered.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Sam heard the news - of course he heard the news. He'd given up his mod duties at jb_baby_barnes years before it turned into the absolute ghost town it was these days, but some rando diehard fan l1bertybellisima still managed to track down his fandom Twitter and tweet the news at him. The UpRoxx hack who broke the news actually wrote the full story based on l1bertybellisima's uncited tweets. Fucking Justin Hammer.</p><p>Sam hadn't wanted the exclusive, really, at all. He knew the psychology of hardcore fannish enthusiasm - that you began to project your own hopes and happiness onto fictional characters - regardless of whether the characters were written by a PR team or a scriptwriter - such that you had an often literal investment in the outcome of their story. He knew that, at its core, a fandom was generally - generally - <em>generally</em> filled with people who just wanted to be happy about something. </p><p>And he was still an active participant in a bunch of different fandoms: he was something of a BNF in the Flash fandom, though he didn't post as often lately, after some of the recent writing choices for Iris. He wrote and produced all the background music he used in any of the Gen Batfamily podfic he posted. He was slowly posting a series of meta essays where he analysed the overlap of superheroism, xenophobia, and the good immigrant narrative across several different DC series, including Superman, Hawkgirl and Hawkman, and Starfire. He guest starred pretty frequently on Tanisha Villanueva's Blerdy podcast, where they talked about anything from the replayability of Breath of the Wild; to black-and-switch in <em>Sleepy Hollow</em> and the Star Wars reboots; to greenness being embraced as blackness, as with Piccolo and Martian Manhunter. He had worked as a storyline writer and produced and wrote the theme song for the now defunct <em>Static Shock!</em> reboot, which had opened up the door for him to write music for CN's upcoming online-only anime block, <em>and</em> to give one-off vocals for John Stewart in a Legends of DC fauxumentary.</p><p>Part of fandom was putting yourself out there, he knew; and yea, sometimes it didn't go well - but sometimes, it led to amazing opportunities and relationships he would've never had otherwise.</p><p>And yet. And yet.</p><p>After meeting JB Barnes, he didn't think he would ever be a fan of anything again.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>What do you think? Originally I wanted Sam to be more into music, professionally, and end up producing for Bucky's new album, but now I'm wondering if I should have them meet as VAs on some project. VAs don't really interact that closely with each other on a job, though.</p><p>Anyway - a few notes:</p><p>I. I understand that some people acquire and sell celebrity signatures on websites like eBay for insane prices. This is what Bucky thinks Sam is doing - he assumes that Sam is not actually his fan.</p><p>II. The fictional SME leak mentioned here is a parallel of the real-life 2015 Wikileaks Sony Movies hack. 'Britain sent three more seniors back to Jamaica' is a reference to the fucking awful Windrush Scandal. In my head I'm setting the leak in like... 2011, maybe? News media online was very different back then, though. I think the actual leak would've played out differently in our world at that time.</p><p>III. Blanche Sitznski is the secret identity of Anacanda, a frequent opponent of Captain America and member of the Serpent Society. The Serpent Society has done some mercenary work for HYDRA as part of the Army of Evil.</p><p>IV. Batrock3rs is a made-up Anonymous/Wikileaks type group; references Batroc the Leaper, whom Steve and Natasha were trying to rescue hostages from at the beginning of The Winter Soldier.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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